A reunion of old friends
by ashleighf4
Summary: Everything he loved was taken from him in an instant. Everything but an old friend, who is determined to show him that life doesn't stop, even if we do
1. Prologue

He is so happy.

His daughter stands next to him, a bow and arrow in her hands. It is his old bow, the one he got from his grandfather. Wood, a bit chipped, nothing fancy. She sounds defeated as she misses. He can hear that slight whine. It doesn't bother him at all this time.

"Concentrate" he says. "Focus. Breathe". She listens quietly, head slightly tilted, the way she has since she was a toddler. She draws the bow back, lets go. The arrow flies straight and true. He laughs as she celebrates. He celebrates too.

His sons run around him. Their laughter, so full of life, pierces his soul. His youngest, hair like the sun, smiles and breaks his heart.

His wife calls out. Something about mustard? He almost can't bear to look, but of course he does. He always does. The glimpse of her is just about worth the ache that follows. The bread she pulls out of the basket smells fresh, and he can just about taste the sweet jam made with plums from their tree. His favourite.

Everything is so beautiful.

He wants time to stop, to freeze. This one time, can't it stop?

Yet, just like every other night (and he reckons it has been just about every night, for five years. Five years? Really?) the dream continues.

His wife's call distracts him. He looks over for a moment. Just a moment. The last moment before the worst moment of his life. When he turns back, his daughter is gone. A puff of smoke, or ash, lingers in the corner of his eye, but everything else of her is gone.

Confusion first. Then gut-plummeting fear.

He turns back to his wife, but she is gone. His sons, likewise, have disappeared.

He begins to run, to try to find them. Surely they can't have just evaporated? They must be playing a trick. His eyes must have stopped working. He must be going mad. But this is not true.

Everything he loves has gone.

Just like the first time, when he was awake.

Just like every night since.


	2. Chapter one

_Chapter One_

Natasha woke up. In the dark she was disorientated. Not so much as to where she was, more when she was. Like so often now, for a moment she thought she was in the past. Then the cold hands of reality gripped her and thrust her back into the present.

You have to stop doing that, she told herself. It is 2021, not 2018 anymore. Not matter how bad you want it, that is the way it is.

Slowly, Natasha got up. She started the day in the way that had so quickly become routine. Wake up, turn on News channel, exercise, eat, shower, work, work, work, turn off News channel, sleep. How did I become so boring? She wondered as she grimly began push ups on the cold floor of the Avengers facility gym.

And yet, she knew the answer to that question. What had happened three years ago, that was on her. Sure, other people couldn't beat Thanos either, but it was still on her. And her ledger was already in the red, even before that. She owed something to humanity. And if this is what it took, a whole lifetime finding out how to reverse what Thanos had done, to get back into the black, then that is what it took.

The pile of emails steadily got bigger. In between desperately trawling for anyway to get to Thanos, Natasha also directed a lot of more, down-to-earth operations for whatever remained of the Avengers organisation. Money laundering in Egypt, people smuggling in Columbia, drug-trafficking, illegal arms-deals, you name it. She opened the next one on the list. Some drug dealers in Naples had been killed. Practically the whole gang. Rival gang? She pondered. Is this our problem? She scrolled down through the file. Cause of death, she read, arrow wound.

Arrow wound.

A feeling that Natasha thought had died jumped into her gut. Pure excitement began to flow. A feeling linked to those lost days of fighting Chitauri, and Nazis, and all the other completely bonkers things she'd had to do just to survive, just to stay alive. Until now she hadn't realised quite how much she'd missed it. She read the file again.

That definitely said arrow wound.

Who uses arrows anymore?

Natasha began to smile. Naples, hmm? It might be time for a holiday.


	3. Chapter two

_Chapter two_

Clint quickly walked down the dark alley, his feet deftly avoiding the scattered rubbish and broken tiles. When the moon caught him, it revealed the bloodstains covering his hands, arms and torso. As a result, he stuck to the deepest shadows. He thought he should be more worried, about being caught, about what he'd done, but this kind of thing was becoming practically routine.

The outside steps leading up to his apartment were uneven, but he easily climbed them. He nudged the door open, flicked on the light, and, before he could even think, threw the small throwing knife he kept strapped under his armpit at the figure on the other side of the room.

Natasha didn't even blink. She watched the small lock of her hair float down on to the ground. Then she looked at Clint. His face was almost impossible to read, but she could see a small storm cloud gathering.

"What are you doing here?" He asked, his voice calm yet warning of danger. She had heard him use that tone with the people they had been sent to deal with, a long time ago. It boded trouble.

"What are you doing here, Clint?" She returned, gesturing at the small, concrete apartment. "Why aren't you at home with the people who love you?" His face went slack. He looked at the ground, at her, then the ground again.

"They're all gone", he whispered, almost to himself.

Natasha had to admit, that hurt a bit. She could hear grief talking, and knew that, logically, he didn't think that. But still, it stung.

"I care about you", she went to say. But she never got to finish. The storm hit. Clint stiffened and clenched his fists.

"What are you doing here?" He yelled it this time. A loud, animal yell. A yell that conveyed the years of devastation and loneliness he had been through. "Get out!" His voice cracked. He flung the door open. "Out!" He shouted. "Out!" But, the more insistent he was, the more upset he became, until he was sobbing and shouting at the same time.

Suddenly, she was there, holding him so his head could rest on her shoulder. As he howled, she could feel something in him start to drain, to release. The tears soaked through her shirt onto her shoulder.

Why did she have to come? He thought. Why? He had finally began to forget them (although, even as he thought that, he knew it was a lie). All she did was bring up memories of his old life, when happiness and beauty were still things in the world. And yet, maybe, now he could remember and feel less pain. He remembered being an Avenger, fighting Loki. It felt good. At least, until he felt guilty for feeling good. Then he just felt worse.

At some point she must have led him to the couch, because now he was lying down, sobbing in the dark, with his head in her lap. Her fingers were gently stroking his head, but he barely noticed. The tears that hadn't been shed over the last three years were coming out now, in a hurry, and they would not be ignored.


	4. Chapter three

_Chapter three_

Finally, the storm receded. Clint lay so still he might have been dead. Small beams of light began to creep through the windows. Natasha could see pink outlining the surrounding buildings.

"Come on," she said quietly and nudged him slightly with her knee. He grunted almost imperceptibly. Natasha slowly began lifting Clint off her legs. His body began to move automatically, trance-like, but he didn't say anything. She took his hand and led him into the small, grimy bathroom. He sat on the side of the bathtub as she turned the shower nozzle on.

"Do you want me to…?" She asked, stepping forward, but he shook his head ever so slightly. Despite this refusal, he made no move to start undressing. Natasha waited, then began to ask the question again. Clint interrupted.

"Can you turn around?" He asked.

Natasha nearly laughed. After all the emotional and physical trauma they had been through over the years, and he was worried about modesty? Still, she nodded. And turned around. But not before she had given him a look that reminded him that after the significant amount of time they had spent working together there wasn't much left she hadn't seen.

She fiddled with a tile as he got in and shut the shower curtain behind him. Tracing patterns in the tile with her finger, she waited for him to talk. It took a while.

Finally, he broke the silence with 'Good flight?'.

Natasha rolled her eyes. Men, I ask you. They spend all night crying (the evidence of which was right there in his voice) and then they ask you about your flight. Nothing about what had just happened, but your flight.

"Fine, I guess. I haven't been outside of the compound for a while, so it was nice to be in the sky again."

"Sure." He said it so quietly she almost couldn't hear it over the water noise.

"You have a nice place here." She tried, grimacing at her terrible effort. But then she heard the last thing she expected. Clint started laughing.

"Liar," he chuckled, "it's terrible". Natasha started laughing too. She looked around at the tiny bathroom and into the quickly lightening, almost as small, main room.

"Oh, it is awful!" She complained, smiling. "I couldn't think of anything else to say". That really got Clint going. She could hear great big belly laughs from the other side of the shower curtain. Natasha smiled. Sure, they might be the laughs one makes instead of crying. But a laugh was a laugh, and Clint looked like he hadn't done so much as smile in years.

The shower turned off. An arm popped out of the curtain.

"Towel?" He asked.

Natasha handed him the crumpled towel sitting on the floor next to her. It disappeared, and then a few moments later reappeared wrapped around Clint's waist. He stepped out of the bath and hurried out the room, shutting the door behind him.

"Stay in there until I find some pants," he ordered.

Poor old Clint, Natasha thought, reflecting on what she'd just seen walk past her. It was his bad luck to be on a team with a god, a super soldier and the Hulk. Against normal humans he looked pretty good. That was tough competition to stand your own against. Still, not too shabby, Mr Barton, she decided.


End file.
